It happens every year in cub scouts - the dreaded pinewood derby race. As a parent with virtually no woodworking experience outside of junior-high wood shop, any competence at making a non-catastrophic - much less competitive - pinewood derby car is non-existent.
Let's get this paragraph out of the way: The race is not by the boys. This is the reality. The dads build and race their cars. No cub scout should be using the power tools that are required to build these cars. The parts that are left for them to be involved in are sanding, painting, and car design. Without supervision and direct guidance, the kids will likely hate their results when compared to the cars produced by other kids' dads.
This year, completely by some chance design decisions at the last moment, we won the rocket derby. Riley's thought for a winning strategy while we drove home with that trophy was, "We should wait until the last minute to build our pinewood derby car, too." I'm thinking that's not going to work for this highly competitive yearly race.
And so this time, we have been planning...
I've been doing a lot of research on what makes for the fastest pinewood derby car. There is a lot of information online, none of it all in a simple, structured format. There are some guides that you can buy, but I guess my open source nature has me thinking that the best information should be available to everyone to either use or dismiss. I am therefore here to reveal to you all of my secret derby plans, based on linked resources, in the hope that everyone steps up their game.
One of the most useful resources I've found is this online "wikibook", How to Build a Pinewood Car.
